Dragon Boat Racing

Not much to report on the kids, but Papa had a pretty eventful weekend.

We put together a dragon boat team at work to participate in the annual Washington DC Dragon Boat Festival. The best analogy to a dragon boat that I can come up with is a slave galley - two rows of ten paddlers, side by side, with a drummer in the front and a oarsman in the back. The paddling (not rowing!) motion is unlike anything else I've ever done in a boat. Certainly nothing like rowing crew, which I've done on an erg machine, but not in an actual boat. And not like a row boat or paddling a canoe, both of which I've done a fair amount. Instead, you bend at the hip, put your paddle in the water, and paddle by pulling while leaning back at the waist. Quickly. And, ideally, the whole boat is perfectly synchronized.

Our boat was full of novices so, needless to say, we weren't very good. In fact, we were pretty bad. In our first heat yesterday, we got creamed by some management consultants from Accenture and some government contractors from Northrup Grumman. In our second race, we completely collapsed and ended up losing to another team of management consultants from Accenture and some team called TECRO. We were all pretty frustrated, and some people were searching for the key strategic approach that would speed us up (if only we were management consultants, this would probably be easy). Those of us with some perspective recognized that our boat was going to suck no matter what, so the only way we could speed up would be to toss out the bad paddlers - very difficult to do given that it was all voluntary and, more importantly, was for fun - or to slow down and try to get synchronized. Today, we tried the second approach, and although we still got clobbered in our first heat (to a well trained team - as with any fringe sport, there are some hardcore afficiandos of dragon boat racing), we stayed together and managed to not embarass ourselves. (In contrast, Abby said, "You guys didn't look very good" after our second race on the first day.) Then in our second race today, we managed to pull out a third place finish in a race of four teams. A moral victory of sorts. Even if we did beat a bunch of kids.

I'm not quite sure why I signed up to participate. I think that I wanted a structured diversion, especially one that didn't involve the kids. But the whole process involved a bigger time committment than I anticipated - three practices (I missed one) during April and two days of races this weekend. Abby and the kids did come to the race both today and yesterday, and I think that the kids enjoyed the whole spectacle. But due to the unpredictable race schedule, they only saw me in the second race yesterday and the first race today. (Yesterday, they had to leave in the middle of the races to attend a birthday party, where both kids had a grand time playing in a moonbounce. Apparently, Teddy didn't really get the jumping part, but he could trundle around and fall over without hurting himself, which is all that he needs to have a good time.) Not sure if I'll do it next year, but it was fun, and I have that pleasant sore feeling that one gets after doing something strenuous. Albeit in very odd muscles, because dragon boat racing is one very odd sport. (We raced near Georgetown Harbor where people sat in the bars along the shore and sipped their drinks while gaping at the odd people in their odd boats on the water.)